While there are no standings in Independence, it is interesting to imagine where BYU Football would be ranked in other conferences.
BYU Football fans like to think that BYU is a Power Five caliber team. Power Five conferences don’t agree with that, they say BYU is a G5 team. The P5 sees themselves an exclusive group and want to keep as many teams out of that group as possible (including many of their own conference members…Syracuse, Vanderbilt and Texas Tech I’m looking at you). The problem is that the G5 views BYU as P5 because for top teams like Boise State, Coastal Carolina or UCF they want to be the top dog, not BYU.
While at the end of the day it doesn’t REALLY matter whether BYU is a P5/G5 given their path the CFP/NY6, it is interesting to still think about.
The reason this topic became interesting is because of comments made by former UCLA Head Coach Jim Mora when he said that “not only would BYU compete in the PAC12…they could win in the PAC 12.”
Where would BYU be in other conferences? Of course like all other preseason polls, this is all going to be speculative. The Cougars could be a top five team this year, or they could go 4-8. That is the beauty of sports.
However, based off some extensive research, here is where I’ve got the Cougars in each FBS conference in the country.
Conference USA
Likely Ranking: Conference Champion
Biggest Competition: UAB
Conference USA is about a half step above FCS, but that is all. There haven’t been any relevant Conference USA teams in years. Normally the C-USA is full of teams that big conferences like the SEC and ACC like to play in their nonconference as “easy wins”.
BYU Football would have no issue likely winning this conference four out of five seasons, and would almost certainly go undefeated in conference play this upcoming season. The one tough part about this conference potentially for BYU is that these conferences are known to have explosive players that either didn’t make it to P5 level, or were from small high schools and were overlooked. On a football team though it takes more than one special player to beat a complete team like BYU.